Rumoured Partnership Between Game and Xbox Could Bring Pre-Order Achievements

This doesn't seem very nice.

Peter Chapman, 2 years ago, 37 comments.

Bear with me on this one, I’m a bit disgusted by it. This is a rumour, published through our friends at StickTwiddlers, so take it with the pinch of salt you should reserve for all rumours. If true, though, it is a pretty gross development in Microsoft’s joyful skip down the pathway of shovelling as much marketing into your stupid pudgy little faces as they possibly can.

According to the rumour, Microsoft is soon to partner with the UK’s biggest specialist retailer of videogames. Game has emerged from their recent troubles with a newfound vigour for competitive pricing – some of their pre-Christmas sales were very good. Unfortunately, they also seem to have spent the party season drinking too much eggnog and talking to the people who are responsible for the Xbox 360’s dashboard and achievements systems.

The snuggling up of the two companies will include a bigger presence for Game on the dashboard, presumably in some of the myriad advertising slots that now populate that system’s front-end. That’s fine. Well it’s not fine, it’s really horrible, but we’re all pretty much used to it by now. What’s really a little bit icky about this rumoured deal is what it might mean for the Achievements system.

Game is keen to get as many of us as possible along to its midnight launches of big games. Microsoft understands the lure of an un-earned achievement badge to many of its most committed fans. Both companies might be about to exploit that lure to encourage people along to Game’s midnight retail events where they can leverage the urge for collection that’s so prevalent among their core customer base to coerce a nice early, full RRP, sale of a game. Gamers, or “humans” to give them another label, will soon be encouraged to earn a special (not included in the usual 1000 Gamerscore) Achievement for loading up a game they’ve bought at a midnight launch. I’ve just done a minisick.

We should stress that this might not be true, y’know, if there’s any sanity left in the world.

If you cant beat ‘em, join ‘em. From Game’s POV they’re being assaulted and bombarded by the industry big boy’s, so what better way to avoid being destroyed than to ally yourself with one of the biggest boy in the playground.
I see Game stopping taking wedgies and toilet head dunking’s, but in place they have to do Microsoft’s homework every day till the end of school.
That’s if it’s true of course

yeah, personally, it doesn’t bother me because I never pay any attention to achievements or trophies but there are some people who really, really do. I imagine they’ll go a little bit nuts with now having one “missing” in a tab on their profile if they don’t buy it at midnight. It just seems a bit mad and very cynical to me.

I don’t really get how this is disgusting, I’d much prefer this to retailer specific pre-order DLC (not that I expect that to go away). What difference does it make if someone gets an extra achievement for going to a midnight launch of a game? If the complaint is that you can’t get it so they have some form of “unfair advantage” over you, then you might as well complain that it’s “disgusting” how some people have more free time than you, or more money to buy games!

I could maybe see the complaint if it wasn’t in a special section, particularly if the 360 has some form of “platinum trophy” but, unless I’ve missed something, I can’t see any reason to be annoyed by this idea. Sorry if I’m just being daft and missing something crucial!

Perhaps it won’t be a big deal to anyone (although MS and Game are obviously hoping it will – or why do it?) but it feels a little bit like they’re trying to exploit the collectors or completionists that are so common among hardcore gamers. To those people, it’s not an “extra” one, it’s one that’s missing from their collection.
As bizarre as I find it, loads of people are really hardcore about collecting achievements and trophies – this preys on that weakness to manipulate a particular buying pattern from those people and I kind of feel like that’s a bit dirty.

I kind of get where you’re coming from, but surely there aren’t that many people who will be affected that strongly? If anything, it might help them to realise how pointless the whole obsession is and set them on the road to recovery :)

I’d personally say that what Nintendo do (/used to do? I haven’t ever owned a DS or 3DS, so I don’t know if they’ve stopped) with the Pokemon games is a lot worse, with special event Pokemon that not only are a one-off event, but often require a long distance journey to obtain. At least for these achievements you only have to pop down to your local Game store, and they have no effect in-game.

Its like selling alcohol to alcoholics. The “collectors or completionists” are in simple terms, suffering from OCD- Obsessive–compulsive disorder, and capitalizing from a desease is indeed disturbing. It was MS who created the whole “my score is higher than yours so I’m better then you” craze in the first place. They have the responsibility to keep it as accurate as possible. If you open the door to buying achievements and trophies then they’re not going to mean anything as everybody will just automatically dismiss them which would render their marketing powers useless. While I’ll agree that might be whats best for gaming in the long run, I’d still like my trophy and achievement score to reflect my gaming preference and not my purchasing habits.

If this is what it takes to keep Game in business and people in jobs then whatever, carry on, us plebs can’t stop the marketing machine. Having said that, I still want Sing Star off my bloody games list, has a petition been started about that yet?

Hmmm so it’s ok for Microsoft and Game to (potentially) shovel some more advertising onto a console so, as you put it, “keep [people] in their jobs”: But if the SingStar icon is keeping people in their jobs then surely they should be allowed to carry on as well?

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